Our Front Door Handle & How to Choose Exterior Door Hardware

Today I’m sharing our new Schlage front door handle as well as my best tips for how to choose exterior door hardware that is stylish, safe, and accents the style of your home. 

As you know, building a new house comes with an absolute plethora of decisions to be made. Some were simple and some were much more difficult. Choosing our front door style was actually a fairly simple decision for me, as I had pinned and saved many examples over the past year or two. Ordering it seemed like a fairly easy task, and our door supplier was great to work with!

But… unfortunately the manufacturer built the door side lites incorrectly so we ended up having to wait about 3 extra months for our front door to be installed. We had plywood in place for several months, and the day that our beautiful new front door arrived and was installed became one of the most exciting moments in the build process.

Choosing a handleset style that would work best with our new front door style was a slightly more difficult decision as our home and front door lend themselves to a few different styles. We really could have gone with any style from modern to antique, classic, traditional or rustic.  So the question became, what is the best hardware for a front door? How do I choose a front door handle; one that is both stylish, safe, and suits the styling of my door and home? Well today I’m sharing my tips for choosing the best exterior door hardware for your home.

I can hardly believe that we’ve already been living in our new build home for three months!  Once we moved in things got even busier than before. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we took on a lot of the finishing work ourselves to make up for all of the COVID related budget overages. And, as the end of the school year approached, most of my non-essential house related tasks fell to the bottom of my list in June. Truth be told, we did not have our front door handle installed until just a few weeks ago.

Renovation Style

Now that the exterior painting has been completed I’m really excited to share how the front exterior of our home is shaping up, including our front entry porch area. Another truth be told, although I started landscaping the front yard a few weeks back, I didn’t actually get my front entry pots planted until two days ago! So now that our front exterior is finally finished I’m excited to share it with you along with how I selected the door hardware style to create the timeless, classic, simple yet elegant front entry that we wanted.

We chose the Schlage Century Matte Black Single Cylinder Entry Door Handleset and Bowery/Greyson knob and couldn’t be happier with our hardware selection! I feel that it suits our front exterior perfectly. What do you think?

Tip 1: Let the style of your door and home exterior be your guide

The exterior of our home is a blend of Craftsman, Modern Farmhouse, and Traditional styles. The peaks of the roofline echo Craftsman and Traditional architecture, while the white board and batten exterior with black windows gives it a Modern Farmhouse feel. I wanted a front entry door that echoed the traditional aspects of the architecture so I selected a 6 glass panel 1/3 – 2/3 window style with coordinating side lights. I felt that since the door itself was quite traditional in feel, it would be nice to modernize it with a simple, square lined and more modern feeling black entry handleset.

Tip 2: Consider the styling of your interior door handles as well

We decided to stay with a similar, modern shape and styling for our interior door handles so that the interior front knob would coordinate well with the rest of the interior levers. I ended up choosing the beatiful Schlage Latitude Gold (aka Satin Brass finish) levers with Century trim for all of the doors throughout our interior. The square shape of the base of both the exterior and interior handles ties them together, even though they are different in finish and style.

Another option that would have worked well with our exterior handle is the Bowery Door Knob with Collins Trim, as it exactly matches the door knob on the interior of our front door, but I actually enjoy the coordinating but not “matching” look of the styles we selected. 

Tip 3: Look for an option that provides the level of security you need

We decided to go with a traditional keyed entry set with a deadbolt rather than an electronic deadbolt to keep the lines of the lock on our front door both clean and uncluttered. We installed electronic deadbolt sets on the rest of our exterior doors, and I will share more about those in a future post.

The front entry set that we selected is rated extremely highly for residential security, a feature that was important to my law enforcement husband.  With a 1- inch latch/bolt on deadbolt and strike/door frame reinforcer with 3- inch screws in order to offer maximum kick-in resistance.

Tip 4: Choose a finish that coordinates or complements the other finishes on your home exterior

Given the exterior finishes of our home with white board and batten, black window frames, and black light fixtures, it was clear that a black handle would probably coordinate the very best for our home. I originally considered Satin Nickel as the Satin Brass finish was only available in more traditional or antique looking handlesets and I wanted a modern feel for the handle.  As I mentioned, on the inside of the house we chose a coordinating style but in a Satin Brass (aka Gold) finish – I’ll share more about our interior handles in a separate post.

Tip 5: If you are replacing previous hardware then consider ease of installation

The Schlage hardware set that we selected was engineered to make it simple to install on both new doors as well as to replace pre-existing door handles. It is adjustable to fit a variety of pre-existing holes, with adjustable latch components for a spread of door prep sizes. It also can suit a left or right hand door swing.

This is all good news if you are DIYer wanting to replace old handles or install your own handles on your brand new doors. We ended up having our door installer take care of our exterior handles, but just because we ran out of time with everything else we had to finish on work on during the last days of our build.

If you’re interested in more info on  how to choose stylish and secure front door handles, pop over to the Schlage blog!

Want to remember this? PIN it for later!

 

I can’t wait to share more posts featuring our new build home with you very soon!

So far I’ve shared: